Generally, a mouse is used as a device which is connected to a computer to specify a position for a job on a monitor or to input a command. A coordinate recognition method used to move a cursor on the monitor with respect to the track of the movement of the mouse is broken down into a relative coordinate recognition method and an absolute coordinate recognition method.
The relative coordinate recognition method is applied to a ball mouse or optical mouse in an ordinary form. A relative position is obtained by calculating the amounts of relative movement from the previous position to a current position, by using a ball-type or an optical-type sensing devices to sense the amount of position movement without pattern paper or an auxiliary device.
Since the ball or optical mouse to which the relative coordinate recognition method is applied can operate without specific pattern paper or an auxiliary device, the structure of the mouse is simple, portable, and relatively has no restriction in use. Also, since the structure of hardware is relatively simple, it is cost-efficient.
Next, a mouse using the absolute coordinate recognition method recognizes a position by using specific pattern paper or an auxiliary device (tablet type device, ultrasonic type device, etc.). The movement track of the mouse can be detected as absolute coordinates. Mostly, the absolute coordinate recognition mice are pen types.
Since the mouse to which the absolute coordinate recognition method is applied detects an absolute position by the help of a specific additional device, it can always detect an absolute position even without having previous data.
For example, in a method of recognizing absolute coordinates by using specific pattern paper, each microcode(position-coding pattern) recorded on the pattern paper (in which a specific pattern corresponding to the absolute coordinates of each microcode is printed) is recognized such that a current position of a mouse can be absolutely recognized. Accordingly, in order to recognize the track of the mouse, microcodes indicating the absolute positions of respective points on a track of the moving mouse should be continuously distributed on the track.
Also used is an electronic pen by which a handwritten diagram or character is stored along the track of the pen, and when the pen is connected to an information terminal later, the stored contents are output on the monitor of the information terminal.